Whatsapp Introduces New Live Location Feature That Lets You Track Friends in Real Time

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Oct20

Pretty soon, it will be easier for family members and close friends to track the location of their loved ones to make sure they have safely reached their destination. WhatsApp has introduced a new feature that gives its users the ability to broadcast their location in real time.

Called Live Location, the new WhatsApp feature will be available on both Android and iOS versions of the application. Apparently, it is a feature that is similar to that of parent firm Facebook, which rolled out the temporary location sharing feature on Messenger last May.

To share your location temporarily with someone, you need to open a chat with that friend or family member on your contact list. The feature can be accessed by choosing the Location option within chat, and you will then need to choose the length of time you want your location to be known to the other party. The feature will start airing your location in real time once you hit the send button.

At the moment, there seem to be three options for the duration of the Live Location feature, according to Tech Crunch. Users can share their real-time location for fifteen minutes, one hour or eight hours but they can manually turn off the feature if they no longer want their location to be broadcasted or if they have already reached their destination safely.

Meanwhile, the receiving party will see a map with the broadcaster’s avatar at the center on their chat. There is also a “Live Until” message at the bottom indicating the time that the Live Location tracking will end.

With its introduction of the Live Location, WhatsApp has joined Snapchat and Foursquare which already have their own versions of the feature.